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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the natural convection of a yield stress fluid in a square enclosure with differentially heated side walls. In particular, the Casson model is considered which is a commonly used model.

The coupled conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy related to the two-dimensional steady-state natural convection within square enclosures are solved numerically by using the Galerkin's weighted residual finite element method with quadrilateral, eight nodes elements.

Results highlight a small degree of the shear-thinning in the Casson fluids. It is shown that the yield stress has a stabilizing effect since the convection can stop for yield stress fluids while this is not the case for Newtonian fluids. The heat transfer rate, velocity and Yc obtained with the Casson model have the smallest values compared to other viscoplastic models. Results highlight a weak dependence of Yc with the Rayleigh number: Yc∼Ra0.07. A supercritical bifurcation at the transition between the convective and the conductive regimes is found.

The originality of the present study concerns the comprehensive and detailed solutions of the natural convection of Casson fluids in square enclosures with differentially heated side walls. It is shown that there exists a major difference between the cases of Casson and Bingham models, and hence using the Bingham model for analyzing the viscoplastic behavior of the fluids which follow the Casson model (such as blood) may not be accurate. Finally, a correlation is proposed for the mean Nusselt number Nu¯.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of complex boundary conditions on natural convection of a yield stress fluid in a square enclosure heated from below (uniformly and non-uniformly) and symmetrically cooled from the sides.

The governing equations are solved numerically subject to continuous and discontinuous Dirichlet boundary conditions by Galerkin’s weighted residuals scheme of finite element method and using a non-uniform unstructured triangular grid.

Results show that the overall heat transfer from the heated wall decreases in the case of non-uniform heating for both Newtonian and yield stress fluids. It is found that the effect of yield stress on heat transfer is almost similar in both uniform and non-uniform heating cases. The yield stress has a stabilizing effect, reducing the convection intensity in both cases. Above a certain value of yield number Y, heat transfer is only due to conduction. It is found that a transition of different modes of stability may occur as Rayleigh number changes; this fact gives rise to a discontinuity in the variation of critical yield number.

Besides the new numerical method based on the finite element and using a non-uniform unstructured grid for analyzing natural convection of viscoplastic materials with complex boundary conditions, the originality of the present work concerns the treatment of the yield stress fluids under the influence of complex boundary conditions.